We asked folks we admire to share one piece of conventional advice that they disagree with.

Martha Vega | Airbnb Mentor “The CASHFLOW Queen”

That you need to OWN a home in order to become a real estate investor. I created a formula for myself with Short term rentals, where l now have 39 rentals I CASHFLOW monthly. Conventional real estate investors own the home, drop a huge down payment and and make a minimal ROI. Read more>>

Bradley Schweit | Photographer and Writer

I remember when I was first making the leap into self-employment, and my father gave me a card to congratulate me. In it he wrote, “Congrats on your ‘early retirement.’” Sure, it was intended to be tongue-in-cheek, but I feel as though a majority of people tend to view self-employment through that same lens: the easy road. In reality, nothing could be further from the truth. I’ve had a lot of jobs throughout the years, and they all paled in comparison to the difficulty of owning and running one’s own business. First of all, your work never leaves you. It’s not as if you punch out and don’t have to think about or do anything work-related until the following morning. No… it’s ceaseless. There is always something to tend to/address. Always. Secondly, there is no guaranteed paycheck. When work is slow, you’re not making money. Fortunately, when work is plentiful, you are. There is no limit on how much you can make, and that is one of the most appealing aspects of self-employment. Read more>>

Tarah Brinkerhoff | Makeup/Hair Artist & Business Owner

I was told multiple times growing up that I shouldn’t make a career out of a hobby. Reason being, you then wouldn’t have anything enjoyable to do in your downtime and your way to de-stress was now the cause of said stress. That piece of advice impacted so many decisions I made throughout my teenage and adult life so far. Although I don’t regret the choices and shifts I made because I learned from those experiences, I know it’s a huge reason why I didn’t take risks and pursue what I really wanted to do with my career earlier on. Since I was young, I loved painting as well as playing with hair and makeup on myself and others, but those were frankly not things I was encouraged to make a living doing by people I respected. It’s surprisingly way more difficult I’m finding to run a business doing something that many don’t value as highly as being an engineer or a marketing manager (both paths I pursued heavily in one way or another), but I’ve truly never felt more like where I was meant to be than now. I feel pretty confident that turning a hobby of mine into a career was absolutely what I should have been doing all along. Read more>

Jen Lagedrost Cavender | Poet, Writer, Floral Artist, & Educator

There’s a saying to “find what you love, and stick to it,” but personally I believe that an authentic life is one lived in many chapters. Find what you love, live into it fully, and also listen when your being creates a new calling for you. You evolve and become your whole life, and each chapter, relationship, location, job, career step, and discovery is part of that journey of becoming. Each experience brings change. As you change, what you love to do may too, and so there’s no need to feel you must “stick” when you can flow, evolve, and thrive. Read more>>